A variety of spinal injuries and deformities can occur due to trauma, disease, or congenital effects. These injuries and diseases can, ultimately, result in the destruction of one or more vertebral bodies and lead to a vertebrectomy in which the one or more damaged vertebral bodies and their adjacent discs are excised. Reconstruction of the spine following the vertebrectomy can present a number of challenges for the surgeon.
One surgical concern is securely interposing a vertebral implant between the remaining rostral and caudal vertebral bodies to ensure that the implant can resist axial, torsional, and shear loading without causing anterior displacement (“kick-out”) or posterior retropulsion of the implant and any associated graft material. Existing vertebral implants which attempt to minimize these methods of failure can often result in other undesirable consequences such as instrumentation pull-out, graft or implant subsidence, graft dislodgment, or erosion of nearby vascular and soft tissue structures due to high profile design.
Therefore, a vertebral implant assembly is needed that resists kick out and retropulsion without injuring proximate bone, vascular, or soft tissue structures and also without significantly lengthening or complicating the surgical procedure.